


It's an Emergency! A Romance Emergency!

by rhysiana



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: M/M, Meet-Cute, Minor Injuries, emergency room visit
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-24
Updated: 2018-06-24
Packaged: 2019-09-06 10:26:04
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,219
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16830793
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhysiana/pseuds/rhysiana
Summary: A little Zimbits ficlet for the “A toddler broke your nose and I may or may not have snapped my thumb during a very intense game of Mario Kart and now we’re both sitting next to each other in the hospital waiting room” AU.





	It's an Emergency! A Romance Emergency!

**Author's Note:**

> Moving ficlets over from Tumblr for posterity.

Bitty could not believe he was sitting in the emergency room for something so stupid. After all his years of pee-wee football, serious figure skating competition, and now NCAA _hockey_ , he found himself in a chair, cradling his hand to his chest and trying not to let anything touch his thumb, over a _video game_. Darn Holster and his “a Haus tournament will be fun!” like he didn’t know he lived with a group of hyper-competitive athletes. There was a reason so many games were banned from the Haus.

The worst part about the wait, in Bitty’s opinion, other than the potentially broken thumb and all that implied, was that he couldn’t scroll his phone comfortably. Did he really deserve to be stuck in the emergency room _and_ deprived of comfortable access to Twitter? That really did seem like too much. He hoped the guys would come back with dinner soon.

He’d just managed to zone out watching the not-quite-prime time cable channel infotainment the waiting room TV in view was tuned to, entertaining himself by trying to figure out what the terrible closed captioning was actually meant to say, when someone settled hesitantly into the chair next to him. He looked over and immediately got caught in blue, blue eyes.

Sad blue eyes that were starting to be surrounded by bruising on both sides, from what Bitty could see around the compress the guy (the tall, dark-haired, well-built, annoyingly handsome even while injured guy) was holding to his nose. “Oh, honey, what happened to you?” slipped out before Bitty could stop himself.

And at that, the guy added to all the color on his face by attempting to turn red as well. “Uh, it was a babysitting accident.”

Bitty blinked at him for a second and then pulled one leg up so he could turn sideways in his chair and stare at the guy in amazement more fully. “A _babysitting_ accident?”

“It wasn’t her fault! I was the dragon and Princess rightly defeated me with her sword-wand. She just… has more of an arm than I expected from a three-year-old.”

Bitty felt his eyes widen at the image this conjured up and he gave the guy a lingering once-over as he tried to imagine it in more detail… at which point he registered the Falconers cap, the Falconers’ rainbow logo shirt from last year’s Pride parade, and, yes, there they were, the atrocious yellow running shoes.

“Oh my god, you’re Jack Zimmermann.”

The guy, Jack, winced. He glanced down at Bitty’s hand and saw the phone. “Please don’t tell anyone?”

Bitty hastily tucked the phone in his pocket. “I swear. But why are you _here_? Don’t you have, like,” he waved his good hand vaguely before the other hand twinged and he brought its support back, “trainers or someone?”

“Sure, but they’ve got the night off like everyone else,” Jack pointed out reasonably. “The season hasn’t actually started yet.”

“I guess that’s true,” Bitty admitted. “My team’s trainers are gonna be pretty irked with me, too, come practice on Monday.”

Jack, as much as was possible around his ice pack, perked up at this. “Oh? What do you play?” Then he added belatedly, “And what did you do?”

“Hockey. At Samwell. And I think I broke my thumb. Video games. It was stupid.”

“Oh, my mother went there,” Jack said, and then, a little wistfully, “I almost did.”

“Really?” Bitty asked with interest. “What did you want to study?”

Jack looked so startled at the question, Bitty immediately tried to backtrack.

“I mean, not that that’s any of my business…”

“No, no,” Jack said hurriedly. “It’s just… no one ever asks me questions that aren’t about hockey.”

Bitty resolved there and then to fix that right away, and they spent the next hour talking about, of all things, the history of rationing during WWII. He had no idea so much time had passed until a nurse called his name for the second time and he startled so badly it jostled his hand, reminding him of why he was there.

“It was real nice talking to you, Jack!” he called over his shoulder with a wave.

***

It wasn’t until after he got back to the Haus that he realized he’d never given Jack his name. “Nooooo!” he moaned pathetically from where he’d flopped across his bed.

“No what?” Chowder asked, popping across the hall. “Do you need a painkiller? I can get you some water.”

Bitty waved his good hand dramatically. “A painkiller won’t be able to help with this! I met—” He stopped himself before he could break his promise to Jack about revealing his presence in the emergency room and restarted his sentence. “I met a cute boy at the hospital and I didn’t give him my number.” Which was rather understating the case, but he wasn’t going to admit that to Chowder. Or anyone else. He let his hand fall to the bed and let out a sigh of deep despair.

Chowder gave him an encouraging pat on the knee. “Don’t give up! Maybe you’ll see him again!”

Bitty reviewed his chances of ever running into a famous hockey star from a city almost an hour away again. “I really, really doubt it.”

***

“Bittle, can you come in here?” Coach Hall called from his office before Bitty could make it out to the stands, where he’d been sitting next to Lardo for the past week, waiting for his stupid thumb to heal.

“Yes, Coach?” Bitty said, and then stopped short.

Jack Zimmermann was in the coaches’ office. Jack. Zimmermann. Was in the Samwell hockey team’s office. At Samwell University. In Samwell. Where Bitty was. Right now.

“I was wondering if you might give Mr. Zimmermann here a tour of Faber. He’s making a donation to the hockey program—”

“In my mother’s name,” Jack broke in.

“—and since you’re not allowed back on the ice yet, I thought you could take him around.”

“Oh, well, yes, certainly, I’d be delighted,” Bitty managed, and mentally smacked himself for babbling.

“Great!” Coach Hall said, and picked up his clipboard. “Well, I’ve got to get out there, but I leave you in good hands, Mr. Zimmermann.”

Bitty and Jack just stared at each other as he left.

“Hi,” Jack managed. He sounded nervous, and it snapped Bitty out of his own stunned silence.

“Hi,” Bitty echoed. “I… I didn’t think I’d ever see you again. What’s all this about a donation?”

Jack shrugged self-consciously, looking down at his feet with his hands in his pockets. “I wanted to find you, and I knew you played at Samwell. I heard the nurse say your name, but you hadn’t ever actually introduced yourself, and I didn’t want to seem creepy.”

Bitty’s eyes widened in surprise at the revelation Jack had wanted to see him again just as much as Bitty had wanted to see Jack. He moved forward and took Jack’s elbow in his good hand. _This boy_. “Well, Jack, you certainly don’t do anything halfway, do you? C’mon and let me give you that tour.”

This time Bitty was pretty sure Jack’s blush was pleased. He grinned and didn’t let go of Jack’s arm for the entire tour. He made sure to show him the entire building, even the loading docks.


End file.
